Whumptober: Day 7 - Isolation
by Lif61
Summary: Sam gives himself up to Hell to keep his family safe, and they put him in solitary confinement.


**A/N: Written for Whumptober 2019**

**Prompt: isolation**

**WARNINGS: This fic contains self harm**

* * *

**Day 1**

Sam wasn't too worried for himself when the demons threw him into a cell in a dark, empty hallway. There was a functioning toilet, a sink, even a cot to sleep on, and he'd gone for long periods of time without food before. He'd survive. Besides, his family was safe. That much he knew. As a trade to keep the demons away from them, he'd given himself up. It was worth it, even as hours passed and he grew increasingly bored, and he'd start at small sounds, wondering if someone was approaching. It was all worth it.

* * *

**Day 4**

No one had come to torture him. Food was pushed to him through the grates of the cell, and when he tried to talk to any demon, they immediately left. Sam even just wanted to taunt them. At this point he had a running commentary in his head about the state of the walls and how dirty they were. He'd found a nail lingering outside his cell, just out of arm's reach, and after spending more than a couple of minutes trying to retrieve it, he kept it under his cot. He'd lift up the ratty mattress and blanket to look at it sometimes, and he'd hide it when his food came. They couldn't know he had something.

* * *

**Day 7**

"Hey, this water's not that cold," Sam commented in disappointment after getting another drink from the sink. He responded to himself, "Yeah, no shit. They're demons. You think they're gonna take care of you?"

He sat on his cot and laughed, looking at the cell door, contemplating ramming himself into it. The nail was in his hand, and he idly scratched it along his palm.

His neck and shoulders ached, the pain going down into his back, and he'd been sweating for at least a day now. Sam knew he smelled terrible, that his cell was beginning to reek. He scratched at the scruff on his face, and picked some dead skin that needed to be showered away off of his jaw. He'd splashed himself with the water, tried leaning over the sink and getting his hair under the flow of it, but there wasn't a lot he could do without soap or shampoo.

His stomach ached at the thought of how filthy he was, about the illnesses he was sure to pick up. Or maybe it ached because he hadn't finished his breakfast.

Chewing and swallowing was a chore, the food bland even if the demons gave him something with more flavor than his usual meal of broth and noodles. Sometimes they switched it up and gave him mac and cheese.

It'd be nice to have an apple, a salad.

Sam leaned his head back against the wall, smiling as he daydreamed of the food he would eat once he got out.

* * *

**Day 11**

There were dark shadows in the corners of his cell, and Sam wouldn't go near them, would just sit in the middle of the floor. He'd even dragged his cot away from the wall to escape them.

Couldn't let them get him.

He couldn't let them get him.

Over the past couple of days the demons had been giving him salt with his meals, maybe as a joke because there wasn't anything worth putting the salt on, but he was collecting the packets now. He had nine of them, and when he had enough he was going to make a circle around himself, show the shadows in the corner that they couldn't get him.

"You're not tough," he accused them. "I've killed worse than you."

They didn't answer back, so Sam muttered to himself, "They think they're gonna get you, but they won't. Show them you're not afraid."

But he was afraid, and lonely, and feeling as though he was getting tortured.

The shadows stayed away from him.

* * *

**Day 18**

Sam pricked his finger with the nail, laughing as a drop of blood welled up, slid across his skin, and then pattered onto the floor.

"Hey, blood," he told it.

Not knowing why, he put his hand to mouth and started to suck.

* * *

**Day 19**

It was impossible to move. His body ached, he was caked in dried sweat, and his head ached with each tiny movement of his neck. The demons would come by, drop his tray down, the sound driving agony into his skull, and he'd lay there, not moving.

The shadows hadn't gotten him yet, and he'd collected enough salt to make a thin circle around himself. The small particles now lost their place on the floor as he pulled his legs up, groaning. God, he felt so sick.

The walls laughed at him.

* * *

**Day 23**

Each day was spent with Sam lying on his cot, incapacitated for a few hours, as his migraines grew worse and worse. At least they didn't linger.

He cried about his ruined salt circle, threw his food out of the cell into the hall in fits of frustration and rage, and he accused the walls of staring at him.

He was itchy. Really itchy.

So Sam scratched, scratching and scratching until blood came away under his nails and he was red, skin flaking off of him.

Sometimes he'd throw the nail across his cell, retrieve it, and do it again.

Other times he'd talk to himself about the various sounds he heard, trying to guess what they were.

"Someone's coming," he told himself. "No, no. They're not. Too small to be a demon."

"An animal?"

"What kind of animal would want to live down here?"

* * *

**Day 25**

There still wasn't a way out. He'd tried in his early days, trying to trick the occasional guard when they awarded him with a minute of their presence as they checked him over. And he'd been ramming against the bars again for the past two days. Still nothing. If the bruises on his body were anything to go by, the cell was winning, and he was not.

He pricked his finger, and he pricked his finger, and he pricked his finger, jabbing the nail into the same cut over and over again. It'd gotten swollen, with yellow pus coming out of it the day before, and he laughed at it.

Maybe there was a way out.

Sam tried to open the cut further, letting infection get it.

* * *

**Day 26**

Heart beating ferociously in his chest, Sam scraped at a divet in the floor. Some of the stone was broken and had been chipped off, and he wanted to see how much he could rip up. Maybe the floor had something underneath it, a way out, someone to talk to.

His hair got in front of his face, he giggled at the ridiculousness of it, and he went back to the scraping and digging.

Eventually he gave up with the nail and put it in his pocket, now digging with his hands.

His jaw was cramping, and it was difficult to swallow. Sam felt much too hot and couldn't see straight. Eventually he ran his hands under the water, splashed some of it in his face as he grunted in what might've been his brain's attempt at amusement. He sprawled himself down on the cot.

Yelling started up as his muscles began to jerk. Sam was up on his knees, limbs banging into the metal grates occasionally as he stared out.

"Hi!" he called.

"Hello," he responded.

"Shut up."

He jumped at the noises that seemed to be drawing closer, at the violence he was sure he heard.

"I'm in here!" Sam cried. "Help, I'm in here!"

He didn't know who he was crying out to, but eventually there was another person before his cell, someone who was achingly familiar and covered in blood. The other person's breaths came fast and fierce, and there was a knife in his hand.

"Sammy?" Dean asked.

Sam nodded, a tear falling at the sound of someone else's voice. He must have looked awful if Dean had needed his confirmation about his identity. His hair and beard were all scraggly, dirt covered his skin and clothes, and he thought maybe a couple of days ago he'd gotten food on himself and hadn't bothered to wash it off.

His brother rushed to the cell door, kicking the rusted padlock off, and he opened it, pulling Sam into his arms.

Sam sobbed, hating him and loving him because he was no longer alone, because he was free. He'd given up on life outside the cell, and it had come back to him anyway.

"Alright, let's get you out of here. Castiel's gonna want to take a look at you. They hurt you?"

"No."

But even as he said it he knew he was lying. The demons hadn't hurt him, but they'd left him in the cell, and the cell had known plenty of ways to torment him. It screamed at him as Dean helped him walk away.

Sam held onto his brother tightly, his presence keeping him from going back.

"Isolation's a bitch, huh?" Dean asked.

"A bitch," Sam agreed, voice holding amusement.

As they left the building littered with dead bodies his mind kept playing over, _Isolation's a bitch. Isolation's a bitch. Isolation's a bitch…_

He wept about his empty cell.


End file.
